Radiation ‘hotspots’ hinder Japan response to nuclear crisis – ‘I want to dig a hole in the ground and scream’

By Kevin Krolicki and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Linda Sieg and Nick Macfie
14 Jun 2011 KANAGAWA, Japan (Reuters) – Hisao Nakamura still can’t accept that his crisply cut field of deep green tea bushes south of Tokyo has been turned into a radioactive hazard by a crisis far beyond the horizon. “I was more than shocked,” said Nakamura, 74, who, like other tea farmers in Kanagawa has been forced to throw away an early harvest because of radiation being released by the Fukushima Daiichi plant 300 kilometers (180 miles) away. “Throwing way what you’ve grown with great care is like killing your own children.” More than three months after the Fukushima nuclear plant was hit by a quake and tsunami that triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, Japanese officials are still struggling to understand where and how radiation released in the accident created far-flung “hotspots” of contamination. The uncertainty itself is proving a strain. “Stress has serious health effects. The Japanese people no longer trust the nuclear industry and the government. People do not know whether their food and their land is safe,” said Kim Kearfott, an expert on radiation health risks at the University of Michigan, who toured Japan in May. … Data so far shows the most heavily contaminated area is to the northwest of Fukushima, where experts believe radioactive debris was carried by winds in March and then deposited as snow and rain. In the city of Date, for example, some 50 km (30 miles) to the northwest of Fukushima, ground radiation was near 24 millisieverts per year as of early June. That is above the international standard for annual exposure by nuclear workers. … It has also created a mood of quiet despair in already devastated communities. “I never believe anything I hear any more on radiation,” said Shukuko Kuzumi, 63, who lives in Iwaki, about 50 km to the south of Fukushima. “I want to dig a hole in the ground and scream.” … “We never thought that that the nuclear accident would affect our products,” said Susumu Yamaguchi, 58, who heads a farmers’ cooperative in the village of Kiyokawa. Yamaguchi has lost a crop worth over $20,000. Another farmer he knows has simply given up his field. Others want answers: How did radioactive cesium from the reactors at Fukushima end up here? Tetsuo Iguchi, a specialist on radiation monitoring at Nagoya University, says experts don’t know. Iguchi is working as a consultant with a government group that is urging thousands of tonnes of contaminated soil to be cleared off and then sent to storage, possibly inside the Fukushima complex. That project will last into 2012 at least. “Even that is optimistic,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever been done before.” …

Radiation ‘hotspots’ hinder Japan response to nuclear crisis